Quizboard for iPhone is a new social trivia game that is like Trivial Pursuit meets Scrabble meets social-gaming. It features a beautiful game board and trivia question from a slew of categories that must be answered quickly, thus keeping you on your toes.
The game board for Quizboard features various point multipliers and blocked squares and one cell with a star. The progress of the game is cooperative and the game ends when a player reaches the star. However, the key is that there is no reward given to the player who reaches the star. Rather, the player who has the most points when the star is reached wins the game.
It's important to keep this rule in mind when playing the game, because if you're losing, you will probably want to play on the defensive and try to block shorter paths to the star so that you have more time to catch-up. On the other hand, if you're winning, you're strategy will be get to the star as quickly as possible.
For each turn, you are given 5 questions. You get to choose from a list of 7 categories. Each category is given a color and you can choose to combine two categories of the same color into one question for more points. The catch is that you cannot use that new question for two turns.
When you answer a question correctly, you must choose where to place the next icon on the board. Some of the cells are point multipliers, so if you think you can reach one during your turn, you may want to head to one. On the contrary, if you don't think you can, you may want to place your tiles in a way so that your opponent won't be able to get to the point multiplier on their turn either. You also get extra points when answering multiple questions correctly in a row.
Each question is multiple choice and you only have 24 seconds to choose an answer. This is great because it's long enough for you to choose the correct answer if you know it, but too short to successfully cheat. Trust me, I've tried. By the time I've done a google search and found the answer (on a separate computer), my time is up.
Quizboard comes with one gameboard for free and is ad-supported. If you upgrade for $2.99, the ads will be removed and you'll get access to all premium boards. The good news is, let's say, that Rene has not purchased the premium boards, but I have. If I invite Rene to play on one of my premium boards, he is allowed to join the game for free. Very cool.
As of right now, Quizboard is a two-player game, but a little birdie told me that more player support with bigger boards may be coming in the future. Each player has only 48 hours to take their turn before being forced to forfeit. I understand why a short time period is desired, but I do feel that 48 hours is too short. Some people only have time to play games over the weekend, so I'd like to see the 48 hours extended to 7 days.
If you're not very good at trivia, the good news is that Quizboard will learn this about you and give you easier questions, making it a fun game for all levels of players.
The good
- Looks great
- Social
- Tailors questions to your level of skill
The bad
- Can't retrieve password if you forget it
- Games get canceled if no turn is made after 48 hours
- Only two players allowed per game (for now)
- Not available on iPad (yet)
The bottom line
Quizboard is an awesome new and addicting social game that is also intellectually rewarding. It's clear that a lot of thought went into creating Quizboard and I appreciate the fact that each turn is five questions, not just one. This makes each turn much more interesting and keeps me coming back for more!
If you pick this one up, feel free to challenge me to a game. My name is llofte (of course!).
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